Live-action fairy tale witches seem to be en vogue in Hollywood right now. Last year gave us two different versions of Snow White. In October of this year, Jeff Bridges will star as a hunter tracking down a witch played by Julianne Moore in Seventh Son. And Disney has a live-action Malificent, with Angelina Jolie in the title role as the villain from Sleeping Beauty, coming in summer of 2014. Even so, Hansel & Gretel aims to be a little different.

Norwegian director Wirkola is probably best known to American audiences for Dead Snow, a horror movie with comedy elements about Nazi zombies. Keeping that in mind, audiences can get a pretty good idea of what Wirkola is going for with Hansel & Gretel.

Still, speculation abounded for some time over this film’s rating, and that it would be “sanitized” so it could receive a PG-13. Since then, more splatter-heavy restricted trailers seem to dispel that theory:

The fact that Hansel & Gretel has been delayed from March of 2012 and dumped in the typically-abysmal month of January does not really bode well. Still, with the R rating intact, fans of action-horror should get their fill. And the movie is apparently testing reasonably well with preview audiences.

The film also features X-Men‘s Famke Janssen as Hansel and Gretel’s witchy nemesis, who may hold a secret to their past, and Peter Stormare as a village sheriff who gets in the witch hunters’ way.

An avid Flickcharter since 2009, Nigel is a self-described fanboy whose Top 20 is dominated by the likes of Indiana Jones, Frodo Baggins and Marty McFly. Nigel is the Canadian arm of the Flickchart Blog, but try not to hold that against him. You can find him on Flickchart as johnmason.